Quotes About Ambiguity

It is him, Random. Him. That's all.

I want to be both pathetic and admirable, I want to be at the same time a child and an adult. Thereby I gamble, I take a risk: for it is always possible that the other will simply ask no question whatever about these unaccustomed glasses; that the other will see, in the fact, no sign.

A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.

that ambiguous area of culture where something unfailingly political, though separate from the political choices of the day, infiltrates judgment and language.

My claim is to live to the full contradiction of my time

either the intention of the myth is too obscure to be efficacious, or it is too clear to be believed. In either case, where is the ambiguity? This is but a false dilemma. Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion. […] driven to having either to unveil or to liquidate the concept, it will naturalize it. We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature.

A man who wants the truth is never answered save in strong, highly colored images, which nonetheless turn ambiguous, indecisive, once he tries to transform them into signs, as in any manticism, the consulting lover must make his own truth

I want you to know that I don't want to show my feelings; that is the message I address to the other...I advance pointing to my mask.

The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live.

was. Is she ours? French? British?" For long seconds Caleb studied the incoming fleck. "Can't tell." "How many? We got the whole British

Perhaps he did not think Junior could live with the moral ambiguities of a fortune extracted by dubious methods.

Had he known what lay ahead, it seems doubtful that he would have persevered.

We were beginning to prosper and I felt very uneasy at my name being linked up with these speculators.

Everybody knows what's going on, she thought, but nobody knows where it's headed. And soon nobody will remember what the point was.

One day it seemed like a good idea, the next day it didn't. That kind of thing happened all the time, way back when, because strategy was fluid. Or because nobody had the faintest idea what they were doing.

He spoke in a neutral tone and said, "Help you?" Which in my experience are two words that can precede anything from genuine wholehearted cooperation to a bullet in the face. I said, "We're looking for John Kott.

State Department. If it's the Brit or the Russian or the Israeli, then sure, we'll let State take the victory lap, but until we know that for certain, this remains a closely held project." "Is that what you call it now?" "Top secret was already taken.

And I read a book that figured the part about the virgins is a mistranslation. The word is ambiguous. It comes in a passage full of food imagery. Milk and honey. It probably means raisins. Plump, and possibly candied or sugared." "They kill themselves for raisins?" "I'd love to see their faces.

horses faded away. Maybe it had served time as an office. It was impossible to tell. It

Too many ifs, Reacher thought. And too few answers.

Legal language strives for concision and avoids ambiguity wherever possible. The result is inevitably dull, but all that striving and avoiding really teaches a person how to write.

I don't know how much longer we can keep on doing it. It doesn't feel like a job for life." "It might have been, for Keever." "That's very blunt.

Maybe it's a good thing if we don't see her. It would mean she doesn't need what Billy was selling. It would mean she's OK. Someone stole her ring. You said so yourself." "Best case." "Which sometimes happens." "Sometimes," Reacher said. "How often?" "More than never. Less than always.

I wanted miles to travel and absolutely no idea where I was going.